52 NT NEWS. Friday, December 17, 2010. www.ntnews.com.au

PU

B:

NT

NE

WS

DA

TE

:1

7-D

EC

-20

10

PA

GE

:5

2C

OL

OR

:C

MY

K

SPORT l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l ntnews.com.au

Rivalry rekindled

Alicia Molik

TENNIS stars JelenaDokic and Alicia Molikwill rekindle a rivalrywhich has been dormantsince their junior dayswhen they meet in thesemi-finals of Satur-day’s Australian Openwildcard tournament.

Molik, the top seed,has already sent out apsychological warningshot.

Molik and Dokic bothbattled to win theirmatches in three setsyesterday with Molikbeating Canberra’s Al-ison Bai 3-6 6-3 6-1, andDokic outlasting Victor-ian Tammi Patterson 7-52-6 6-3.

Molik, 29, and Dokic,27, travelled as juniorstogether but have notmet in a senior tourevent.

‘‘We’vepractised somany yearstogetherand been onso manyjunior trips

together, it’s all a bit of ablur but the junior rival-ry will come back out onSaturday, I’m sure,’’Molik said.

Molik recalled Dokic’sstirring run to the Aust-ralian Open quarter-finals two years ago, butwarned even experi-enced players could be-come apprehensive.

In the men’s draw, topseed Peter Luczak rea-ched the semi-finalswith a 6-3 7-6 (7-5) winover Victorian JamesLemke. He is set to meetWest Australian Mat-thew Ebden.

Good to be True

Brett Young

DEFENDING Sydney toHobart handicapchampion Two Truetook a giant steptowards making hermark in this year’s raceon a day when several ofher rivals copped a soliddrenching.

The 40 foot SouthAustralian BeneteauFirst 40 had her title de-fence thrown into dis-array last Monday weekafter she suffered mastbreakage during her de-livery to Sydney.

Her plight generatedan extraordinary re-sponse in the sailingcommunity, with a floodof offers of help and ofreplacement masts.

Yesterday in Sydney,Two True installed herreplacement mast loan-ed to her by Cruising

Yacht Clubof Australiavice com-modoreHoward Pig-gott, whoseFirst 40 Fly-

ing Cloud isn’t contest-ing this year’s race.

Two True boat man-ager Brett Young wasoverwhelmed by the re-sponse after the topthird of her mast wasdamaged as the boat wasbeing towed off asandbar at Victoria’sApollo Bay.

Meanwhile con-tenders in the Rolex Tro-phy Rating Series onSydney Harbour facedthunderstorms onThursday; handicaphonours went to TP 52Hooligan, attached toTeam New Zealand.

Pocock would swap all personal accolades for World Cup success

David Pocock

POWERHOUSE flanker DavidPocock collected yet anothermajor gong yesterday — andthen said he’d happily swap hisswag of individual awards forthe rugby union World Cup.

Pocock added the RugbyUnion Players’ Association’sMedal for Excellence to hisJohn Eales Medal and People’s

Choice award asAustralian fans’player of the year.

The 22-year-oldback-rower wasalso shortlistedfor international

player of the year honours af-ter a mighty season for the in-consistent Wallabies.

While humbled by all the ac-colades, Pocock said helpingAustralia claim the ultimateteam prize on offer in New Zea-land next year remained hisNo. 1 priority.

Two-time champions Austra-lia has not lifted the Webb EllisCup since 1999.

‘‘You’d swap everything for

that,’’ Pocock said. ‘‘Definitely,every rugby player’s dreamand goal is to win a World Cup,so next year will be a massiveyear for us. We can’t get aheadof ourselves. We’ve put in a lotof hard work and we’ve pro-gressed a bit this year, butwe’re still nowhere near wherewe need to be.’’

Prince in Olympics probeOLYMPIC authoritiesare seeking clarificationfrom Monaco after anAmerican, who claimsto have been an em-ployee of Prince AlbertII, alleged breaches ofthe International Olym-pic Committee’s code ofethics.

In a letter to the IOC,

Robert Eringer’s lawyersaid there was evidencePrince Albert, an IOCmember, received giftsfrom former Russia pre-sident Vladimir Putinbefore and after the voteto host the 2014 WinterOlympics. The IOC vot-ed in 2007 to award theevent to Sochi, Russia.

Snow blow to NFL gameWORKERS wieldingshovels and snowblowers tried to clearsnowdrifts from the Uni-versity of Minnesota’soutdoor stadium yester-day in readiness for anNFL game on Monday.

The university’sstadium — normally thehome of the Golden Go-

phers gridiron team —was tabbed to stage theMinnesota Vikings’home game against theChicago Bears afterheavy snowfall lastweekend caused the in-flatable teflon roof of theVikings’ Metrodomestadium to collapse andthree panels to rip.

Rugby to rake in millionsRUGBY World Cup organisers say they are on track todraw 85,000 international visitors and gross $A201 millionin ticket sales for the sport’s 2011 showpiece in New Zea-land. Since the sales program was launched earlier thisyear, 864,000 tickets have been sold, nearly two-thirds ofthe overall target of 1.45 million sales across the 48matches. About 662,000 of those have been sold throughRugby New Zealand 2011’s global public ticket phases. Tic-ket sales revenue totals $A124.5 million.

Aussie short-course silverAUSTRALIA claimed its first medal on the opening nightof the world short-course swimming titles in Dubai finish-ing second behind world record-breaking China in thewomen’s 4x200m freestyle relay. China took almost threeseconds off the old mark to take gold in 7min 35.94sec. Thefirst four finishers all broke the old record, set by the Neth-erlands in 2008, with the Australian team of Blair Evans,Jade Neilsen, Kelly Stubbins and Kylie Palmer storminghome to pip the US and France.

Stosur heads Fed Cup squadSAM Stosur is set to reignite her rivalry with French Openchampion Francesca Schiavone after being named in an ex-tended Australian Fed Cup squad to play Italy early next year.World No. 6 Stosur, who lost to Schiavone at Roland Garros,heads a seven-strong squad for the February 5-6 tie in Hobart.Jarmila Groth and Sophie Ferguson are a chance, while Anas-tasia Rodionova, Alicia Molik, Jelena Dokic and RennaeStubbs were also called up. Australia sealed a place in the FedCup World Group in April this year when it beat Ukraine.